SimpleDateFormat try parse, avoid empty catch block

I implemented the following method that can be used to convert a String to an accepted format: 

public static Date parseDate(final String dateString, final String[] acceptedFormats) {
        for (String format : acceptedFormats) {
            try {
                return new SimpleDateFormat(format).parse(dateString);
            } catch (ParseException e) {
                // dateString does not have this format
            }
        }
        return null; // dateString does not match any accepted format
    }

As I read from some Java books, its not a good practice to use exceptions to control the flow. In this case, I use an empty catch block and thats not a good practice. Can you help me to to write a method that does the same thing but in a different way? I have to mention that I am not allowed to use external libs( I know that there a lib from apachee that can do this thing in a nice manner)

Jon Skeet
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You can use the overload of parse which takes a ParsePosition:

public static Date parseDate(final String dateString, final String[] acceptedFormats) {
    ParsePosition position = new ParsePosition(0);
    for (String format : acceptedFormats) {
        // TODO: Specify time zone and locale
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(format);
        Date date = format.parse(text, position);
        if (date != null && position.getIndex() == text.length()) {
            return date;
        }
        position.setIndex(0);
    }
    return null; // dateString does not match any accepted format
}

Note the check that the parse position is the length of the string - that prevents false positives where some of the text has been parsed, but there's more left over - such as a format of "yyyy-MM-dd" and text of "2015-07-02T15:40".

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